Representations: Visual Arts: Southeast Europe

(1,890 words)

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The early period

At the end of nineteenth century, for Europeans with Victorian sensibilities, Southeast Europe (the Balkans) was still a part of the “Orient.” People from the region were seen as childlike, exotic relics in a living ethnographic museum, possessing an authentic but archaic past. Over time, elites in the Balkan nations had assimilated much of this imposed role, followed by later attempts to es…